United States healthcare is ranked last in the industrialized world. Arkansas is ranked the last of 50 states in emergency healthcare by the American Academy of Emergency Physician (ref).

Dr. Lafferty and Dr. Karas have decided to take matters into their own hands and not wait on the government.

Having each spent almost a decade in the Emergency Rooms of America they have drawn some conclusions.

1. Approximately 75% of the visits to ER’s are not true emergencies.
2. Doctors spend more time charting on patients than we actually do in seeing patients.
3. Doctors are reimbursed for only a small portion of the overall ER charge/bill.

These conclusions have led us to our new concept in acute care medicine.

1. We do not see what we believe are true emergencies- Chest Pain, Signs of Stroke, Syncope (passing out), major trauma (car accidents), severe abdominal pain, and children under 3 months of age with fever.
2. We believe the patients are intelligent and can fill out the complaint form on their own. The doctor then uses the bottom of this sheet for his own limited (what the doctor sees fit, not what the insurance company will want) notes. The form is then scanned into the computer and backed up for “electronic medical records.”
3. To avoid the largest part of the cost of an ER visit we avoid all the burdens of large institutions with their institutional overhead-hospitals, insurance companies, and out of state contract companies that manage ER’s. We do not have lavish offices with multiple employees. We have only a front desk person and the physician or nurse practitioner. We do not file insurance for patients. While we believe insurance is necessary and good for major medical problems such as cancer and heart attacks we don’t believe it is necessary or helpful for basic office visits. By not filing insurance this negates the need of 1 or 2 people in the office that solely work on getting reimbursements from insurance companies. This also decreases the amount of charting needed and allows the physician to spend more one on one time with patients and still see patients in an incredibly efficient manner.

We believe this is taking us back to the time when “patients enjoyed their doctors and doctors enjoyed their patients.